Author commentary for the comic strip Bible Stories, which tells the entire Bible, in order, in a four-panel Peanuts form.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Bible Stories 013

Day six is when the land animals (including, eventually, humans) appear. This particular strip should give you an idea of how long a "day" is. The Bible, of course, doesn't have dinosaurs, but my strip does, since I felt they were important enough to be represented.

God "revealing" himself to a creature is just another way of saying that the creature is achieving a higher consciousness. According to this story, dinosaurs almost achieved it, but then went "extinct." I tend to side with those scientists who say that many kinds of dinosaurs evolved into birds (though some types became extinct in the usual sense of the word), and I figured an ostrich would be the closest visual approximation to get that idea across (whether the connection shown is scientifically accurate or not).

The fact that the Tyrannosaurus Rex evolves into an ostrich during the gods' conversation demonstrates not only the speediness of time (from God's point of view) but the slowness of God (from ours). So if it seems that 2,000 years between Jesus and now (for example) is a long time, it's not--not compared to the difference between panel three and panel four of this comic.

As far as technical matters go, I had to make the choice between whether to draw the animals myself (on the computer or by hand) or just use images from the internet. I went with the latter, obviously, figuring if this comic ever got picked up, I'd do the difficult work later (whether that meant replacing the images or getting permission).

Story-wise, the narrative seems to be following the Son trying his best to impress his dad and failing. But something tells me it will all work out for him.